Page 2 of The Madness Within

And she was getting close tome.

I didn’t realize who she truly was until the threads bled red.

The girl Kreed Elias failed to kill. The one left alive after her mother was butchered by something not of this world…Him.

The girl whose blood might unlock the Gate. The one who heard things no one else could.

She wasn’t just persistent. She’simportant.

The Veil was thinning. The Gate was twitching. Things on the other side were watching. Waiting.

And her name was whispered like prophecy.

I should’ve left her alone.

But I took her. Brought her into the house where my shadows never sleep. I locked her in the east wing. Not to punish her.

To protect her.

She didn’t know it yet. She thought I was the villain.

And maybe I was.

She hated me with a heat that scorched. But it’s the way shelookedat me… like she saw the fracture beneath the mask. Like she could fall through it and shatter, too.

There’s something between us. A current. A tether. A kind of ache that didn’t make sense but felt like truth.

She was fire and fury.

And I was built of every reason she should run.

But she didn’t.

She challenged me. Taunted me. Made me want to be something else, someonealmosthuman. And that’s dangerous.

Because Kreed was still out there.

And he remembered her. He remembered what her mother uncovered about the Gate. About the rituals. About the ones who would use Ember as a key.

He’d come for her again.

And this time?

He wouldn’t miss.

I’d kill him before that happened. Burn the world if I had to.

Even if it meant becoming the madness fully. Even if it meant she’d never look at me the same way again.

Because Ember Carr wasn’t just a girl with a podcast and a wall of red string.

She’s the end of something.

Or the beginning ofeverything.

And I didn’t know if I wanted to be saved… I just knew I’d rather burn with her than survive without her.

Chapter One

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